Gloucester Daily Times
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
Published: September 12, 2006
Lecture highlights Cape Ann art colony's Golden Age
By Peter Anastas
Gloucester Daily Times
Cape Ann art and artists have played a prominent role in three major exhibitions of visual art held this summer on the North Shore.
"Enlightened View: Artists Teaching on Cape Ann," at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly between June 2 and Aug. 12, highlighted the work of teachers and students who participated in the many summer art schools that thrived on the North Shore during the past 100 years, including such well-known artists with local ties as Fitz Henry Lane, Stuart Davis and Emile Gruppe.
"Painting Summer in New England," shown at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem between April 22 and Sept. 4, featured paintings from the 1850s to the present that reflected summer themes and the impact of coastal and country life on the artists. Included were works by Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, John Sloan and Edward Hopper, all of whom had spent significant time painting on Cape Ann.
And in Gloucester, at the Cape Ann Historical Museum from July 1 to Sept. 10, "Theresa Bernstein: American Modernist," focused on the work of the prolific contemporary artist, who lived and painted in East Gloucester during summers from 1916 until her death in 2002 at the age of 111.
Against the backdrop of these well-attended and widely reviewed shows, Gloucester artist, lecturer and educator Susan Erony is offering a series of lectures, "100 Years in the Life of an Art Community: Cape Ann from 1850-1950," on three successive Tuesday evenings beginning tonight at 7 at the West End Theater, 1 Washington St.
Sponsored by SeARTs in collaboration with the Jane Deering Gallery of Annisquam and Boston, these illustrated lectures will explore how, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, Cape Ann was a thriving art colony, one of, if not the oldest, in the United States.
Erony will also attempt to show not only what attracted so many artists here but also how varied their responses were to the topography, the light and the indigenous culture of Cape Ann.
"When I arrived in Gloucester in 1995," Erony said, "I had no idea of what had happened here in the arts and what was here that contributed to its happening. ...
"Art colonies don't happen by themselves. There are conditions in the community that support and sustain art."
The very atmosphere of Cape Ann, its natural beauty and the ethnic and social diversity of its people, is part of what has attracted so many artists over the years.
Erony also wants to show in her lectures how the art created on Cape Ann fits into the larger context of American art history.
"I want people to understand that this contemporary art everyone seems to be running from now also happened here. This was a place where cutting-edge work was created."
But Erony won't linger entirely on the past in her three lectures. Her concern is also in supporting and sustaining a vital and economically viable local art community today.
"What can we learn from what happened here during those first 100 years that we can use now to revitalize the arts on Cape Ann?" Erony said she will ask as part of her concluding lecture.
One of the missions of seARTS, Erony said, "is to understand those conditions, understand what worked and what did not, and figure out what can be done to truly encourage the existence of a vital art scene on Cape Ann."
Erony's first lecture, tonight, will be on the background of Cape Ann art.
The second lecture on Sept. 19 will focus on art and artists between 1850 and 1914; and her final lecture, on Sept. 26, will treat the art scene here between 1914 and 1950. Each illustrated lecture will last for an hour and a half, including a question period.
Tickets, which may be purchased at the West End Theater on the nights of each lecture, are $7 for individual lectures and $15 for the series, with discounts for SeARTS members. For further information, e-mail SeARTS at "castano@artsgloucester.com"
Peter Anastas is a member of the board of directors of seARTs, a coalition of artists, art lovers, cultural institutions, businesses and municipal organizations working together to improve the economic base for the arts and the larger Cape Ann community.